Your One Wild and Precious Life
Unitarian Society of New Haven
February 24, 2019
Liam Kane
Good morning USNH. I am Liam Kane and I am going to tell you about what I want to do with my wild and precious life. Life is an adventure. So many things happen in it, and there is so much you can do. I was born in New Haven at the Yale hospital on March 21 2009.
Since I was a baby, I’ve always wanted to be moving. By the time I was 2, and I could run, I was pushing a big toy truck in a loop around our house really fast. My parents were scared I would crash into a corner, but I never did. I always had good depth perception, which helps me in sports today.
When I was about 3, I did soccer in Guilford, and I didn’t like it. My mom went out on the field with me, and the coach said “Liam, why are you the only one out here with your mommy”. He was being negative, and it shut me down for a while. But when I was 4, my neighbor Carter Williams came in to my life and played soccer with me. He was patient and he encouraged me. He inspired me. From then on, I loved soccer. In second grade I started to love baseball. Now I love so many sports, and there are so many activities I like to do. When I grow up, I want to be an athlete because it helps me to burn off energy and it’s fun. When I’m in the middle of a game, I feel happy, connected and confident.
I’m interested in other things, too, like singing and writing my own songs. I also like business – it’s fun figuring out a budget and playing business games on my iPad. One way I’d like to take action for good is by cleaning up the earth. We need to clean up our messes and recycle better. If I get to run a hotel or airline business, I want it to be one that respects the earth – and I would donate to environmental projects.
In order to live out these dreams that I have, I need to work hard, take care of my body and spirit, and learn how to work with others. None of that is easy. You have to work at it, but it’s worth it. So, what are YOU gonna do with your one wild and precious life?
Emma Kennedy
Hi, My name is Emma Kennedy, as many of you know!
I have been coming to this church for exactly 5,841 days, counting leap years. I know this because in three days, on Wednesday, February 27, I turn 16. I will have been alive for exactly 5,844 days, and I’ve been part of this church since I was born. I was even named here.
But, thinking about how long that is in context, that’s not a lot of days.
And that’s why I’m here to answer the question “What do I plan to do with my one wild and precious life?” I’ve got so much more life to live, and so much I can do with it. So what do I plan to do? The short answer is as follows. I’m not sure!
I have not had a lot of wild and precious life to live, comparatively. My experiences are limited by my time on this planet. But, from the experiences I have had, I have a general idea of what I want to do. I’m an artist, and an actress. Beyond that, I’m curious about the world.
In my spare time, when I’m not at school, I like to create. I draw near-constantly, on worksheets, in notebooks, on whiteboards, in journals. Whatever I can get my hands on. I even go to a studio on Saturdays just to paint. I surround myself with comics and other works of art, looking at all those who came before me for inspiration. Sharing my art grants me fulfillment.
I also act, mainly in Shakespeare. The themes and characters that Shakespeare presents resonate deeply with me. I connect to the stories on a personal level, and this makes me want to share my passion with others. If I can bring even half of the feelings I have about Shakespeare to the stage, letting people see why his stories have endured thus far, I will be happy.
SO, in a very broad sense, what do I want to do with my one wild and precious life? I want to put more wonder and beauty into the world, and in the process, make the world a happier place. That’s my dream for the future, my dream for my one wild and precious life.
Jason Kyle
Whenever I think of my life, wild and precious are not 2 words I normally think of. Usually it’s more like slow down and my knee hurts.
Time flies when you have a 3 and 6 year old……and you’re 42.
Speaking of time, I feel like I might be headed for the back 9 of time now. This is weird for me because I’ve always thought of life as the uphill climb. But now that I’m where I’m at, The view has leveled off.
I mean, look at what I’ve got! A gorgeous wife who is amazing in every way.
2 boys that are so full of life and love that sometimes I’m blown away!
We have a good home on a nice street with great neighbors too.
My spiritual life is improving. I mean, considering there was nothing in my life like USNH until 2 years ago.
Now, who would have thought I’d be looking to hurry through talking here, to you, so I could get back to the 4th and 5th graders I’ve been learning from since the fall in RE!
Work has brought a decent level of itself into our lives but not enough to interfere TOO much with life.
At least from my point of view.
Considering when I met my wife Betsy, I had 3 jobs and couldn’t find time for us to even meet, so she came to my job to meet me.
It was a Saturday night. My shift on the air at 991 PLR. I had the 7 to midnight on air shift every Saturday night. I was also on week days from midnight to 5:30 AM on Star 99.9 and before that shift started, I could be heard on 95.9 the FOX in Fairfield county from 7-midnight 5 days a week. I also produced a Sunday morning show for Little Steven from the E Street band called the underground garage and when that was over I had either the mid day or afternoon shift back at PLR.
Man I was busy.
But not too busy to fall in love!
That was 2005! I turned 29 that day I met my wife!
Hell of a birthday present!
And for the record, 6 years before that day, I was telling people I knew and sailed with on my ship when I was in the NAVY that I was going to be a radio DJ and would have the coolest and easiest life.
I sure did make that happen!
Little did I know I’d need to have work at 3 different stations just to pay the rent!
Barely!
But anyway, back to now. I only have 1 job to concern myself with and I’m not out every night! YAY!!
Family and home life IS the most important thing to me. Our 2 special humans we made together and my partner through everything are what make this life I live precious.
As for the wild, well……that was a few years ago.
Soon it’ll be the boys turn to be wild.
I just hope my experience in life will allow me to help them be who they want to be and I can be here to enjoy the view with my best friend!
Linda Mehta
I don’t know how wild this precious life of mine has been, but it certainly started in the wild, the wilds of the northern Illinois prairie. I enjoyed a remarkably wide-ranging territory as a very young child roaming among the prairie grasses and climbing the poplar trees. I can remember lying on the sun-warmed ground smelling the hay-scent of the grass. I would chase cloud shadows across the rolling prairie. I spent hours swaying in tree tops, finding nests in the pines, and checking out the bobcat’s burrow and the possum’s tree. Summer days inevitably ended with woodtick checks. Lyme ticks weren’t in vogue yet. So, I wasn’t oblivious to the discomforts of nature, but I ignored them for the sake of discovery: living off the land on wild black raspberries in the heat and pollen of summer; the frigid waters of Lake Superior meant riding the waves and searching for agates in the sand; brutally cold winters were made for sledding, skating, and coming indoors for cocoa.
I was the middle child of five, neither the first nor the last daughter, and the roles of fair-haired eldest and family genius were taken, so I became the caregiver. I took care of pets and helped with younger siblings; I was a precocious cherry pie and bread baker. I adopted my own little cherry tree that lived precariously near our main sledding trail. Later life offered more caregiving opportunities, as it will do. Caregivers are notorious for postponing their own needs. I’m unfortunately inclined to go for small doses of comfort grabbed on the fly: comfort food, comfort entertainment, the momentary comfort in postponing things that need to be done.
The problem is, momentary comfort is — momentary — it doesn’t end up building a reserve of calm or the capacity for rejuvenation that you need to call on in challenging times.
So why all this talk about comfort and discomfort? It’s at the heart of the question facing me, What next? What am I called to do as I approach the end of my 7th decade? Challenging times approach. No one gets to this stage of life under a delusion of immortality: to understand that time is limited is realistic. Reminders of wear and tear on the physical body, which provides us access to the substrates of our active living, are the stuff of daily life and can’t be ignored. I so
often would prefer not to face the discomfort of the discipline of conquering the next big learning curve.
At Waldon Pond, Thoreau wished to live deliberately. These days, we might add mindfully. I can see how that temptation to give myself a break can threaten to gradually pull me gentle into that good night against which I should, maybe not burn and rage, but deliberately, mindfully resist. If time of life is drawing closer to its limit, time in a day or a week may expand, as responsibilities shift or recede, with new time to ride those waves and find those agates and embrace that learning curve, because—that web of interdependent existence we talk about?
It’s not static; it’s an incredibly dynamic web, constantly changing, adapting, and complex beyond our imagining. Continuing to learn about and act within that dynamic and complex web of existence is essential to living life fully.
I can’t tell you specifically what I will do, what I will accomplish. I hope to find time for more writing and music. But I believe that continuing to learn and striving to live deliberately and mindfully will lead to a richer life than otherwise would have been, and – who knows? – maybe the spice of wildness will slip in.